Letter: When have we won? Depends who ‘we’ are

Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

Richard Brown's thought-provoking letter from Feb. 12 asked how will we know when we have won in Iraq. Well, "The Great Decider" has decided not to tell us. In an attempt to answer that ourselves, we might borrow a thought from a former president. The answer might depend on how we define the word "we."

If the war in Iraq is prolonged, and we send even more troops, and our aggression with Iran is escalated by the miserably unbelievable "intelligence" that our executive branch is bombing us with in the obedient media, then "we" means Halliburton, the big oil companies and the defense industry, and "we" have won.

On the other hand, if "we" means the American people, then "we" will have won when all of our remaining troops are back on U.S. soil. "We" the American people will have won when we have gotten out of a senseless war based on lies in a country which has been fighting religious wars for centuries (and will continue doing so) and is not interested in adopting a Western-style democracy. In addition, Iraq has never shown an intention to fight any kind of war on American soil, and it has not been connected in any way with the terrorists who may promote hatred of our people.

"We" will have won when the world has moved on, sweeping the embarrassing actions taken by the United States in the first six years of this century into history, and our America has moved on with the business of helping people around the world with real problems, once again earning the respect of the rest of the world as a competent leader.

Frank Musaraca, Henderson